A Wretch Like Me
by AshHavynn
Summary: Story following the prologue, The Game of Life and Death. One of Hojo's experiments escapes, aided by Lucretia. AU. Prequel to Pandora's Paradox.


"You're leaving?" The slender, damaged woman took two sharp steps towards me with tears in her eyes, lifting a hand as if to ask me to snatch it up in my own and cling to her for dear life. "No, please! You're not well! You can't take care of yourself yet, you'll die without a parent figure!" The Vietnamese scientist, speaker of the phrase, stood staring urgently at me. I can still remember the expression of worry she had in those eyes. I… I wanted to love her back. I wanted to run to her and throw my arms around her. I wanted, almost, to call her 'Mother.'

But such luxuries were not for me in this world, or so in my first onslaughts of teenage angst and trauma I was determined to believe.. I couldn't have the life other children lived. I couldn't afford to stay. I couldn't afford to rely on a woman as emotionally unstable as Miss Crescent. I couldn't be naïve, I couldn't pout or whine or act spoiled or throw temper tantrums or beg for things I didn't need but only wanted. Most of all, I couldn't become dependent and stay in one place ignorantly and stubbornly awaiting my doom.

I couldn't be her child for her, as much as I wanted her to be my mother for me. So cold, I stared at her, silent. I turned the distant wish over in my head, and picked it apart until I _knew_ the want to be innocent was a weak dream, fragile and cracking before my eyes, now parallel to my reality. I'd lost my childhood, my innocence, my naïveté. Those are things that adults, adolescents, and such children this unfortunate alike can never, ever regain. And unfair as it is, I had no time to mope around and try to relive it--life was going to continue in its ferocity with or without me.

I knew that it was best. It was best… that I turned away right then and there, ignoring Miss Crescent's tears, denying myself something I could never get back, anyway… and walking away. Whether I returned, or even saw Miss Crescent again, was completely left to chance; to fate, if you can believe in a thing like that.

Miss Crescent…No, Lucretia… You've been so kind to me. You were there when even my own body wouldn't rescue me. You were strong and brave and bold… Or, of course, you might have been desperate in motherly instinct for a companion, and temporarily lost your wits, but whichever came first, I hold you in high regards for it. You fed me, clothed me, refreshed my tired, mortal body… Unfortunately, I could have never stayed there with you. Thank you… And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't return the favor.

…Anyway, I did it. I just turned… And walked away. Out into the cold, lonely streets of Midgar. Professor Hojo's assistant never even tried to stop me. Maybe she knew it wouldn't work. Maybe she wanted me to decide. …Or she could have been having a weak moment, lost in her overwhelming emotional mal health…But, perhaps she was saying a prayer for me as I left her. I don't know, maybe she still is.

Whichever the case, I digress. I was walking down the dark alleys of Midgar. Midgar, in my time, (and possibly more so in its current conditions) was the most dangerous place for a young girl of my age to be. It was brimming with murderers, muggers, gangs, crooked cops, rapists, child molesters… Or, at least the slums of the city were, and Miss Crescent knew well that the slums of sector 7 would be the best place to hide me from the devious company Shin-Ra (for whom my former captor worked), since they'd hardly think anyone would be stupid enough to turn a little girl loose in such a dangerous place. The company has a tendency or underestimate the mad sanity of their clients. However, as I was saying, it was dangerous for a girl of my age. Actually, it was dangerous for a girl of ANY age to wander alone through the slums of Midgar.

In this case, my age at that time doesn't truly matter, but for the sake of the story, I'll tell you:

I believe I was 13. There was no clear way to be sure, but the research I've done on my birth, though my results were miniscule at best, tell me I was about 13. I was built like a 9-year-old, however, my growth stunted by lack of proper nutrition, but my capacity for learning, and what intelligence I already had was heightened beyond my age.

It was like nighttime in that city. It was always nighttime. The city could be looked at as 2 story, the ground floor being largely industrial, cheap homes for the poorly paid workers of the mako-energy factories, a job more dangerous than coal mining, mind you. The top floor? All riches and suites, bigwigs and the likes getting paid beaucoups of cash for sitting in their fancy chairs and deciding how next to scam the lower classes.

Somewhere between that alley and where I see you face to face I think I got lost. No, I know I got lost.

The loud police sirens, dogs barking, various scraps of garbage being rummaged through by rats and feral animals, the distant sobbing of a child, smothered screaming and other commotion that I liked to believe didn't scare me in the least were giving me a migraine-- a sensation like none I ever remembered and minus giving birth like none other I'd ever feel. I wasn't certain which direction would take me to the place where my death would be delayed the most. I'd surely die no matter which way I chose, the object was simply to decide which would be least immediate.

After standing in one place for minutes, becoming painfully paranoid, and wishing several times that I'd just stayed in Miss Crescent's warm, comfy home (a weakness that, at that age of immaturity I scolded myself for), I finally decided to go in the direction of the police sirens and crying child. Don't ask me; I don't know why. There was just something about the way that little girl cried that drew me to her; that forced my feet to keep on. Maybe it was the feeling that someone could be having a worse day than I. Maybe it was acute motherly instinct. I never truly question it because it's an unlikely choice to have made that I'm so glad to have taken.

So there I was, walking down that narrow alley, half wary that I'd be abducted, raped, mutilated and left for dead before I ever saw what lay at the end of said alley. And with each step I took, a horrible smell grew more and more pungent. This… Putrid, nauseating stench of heavy alcohol, burning rubber, smoke, diesel fuel, and _blood_. The smell of death overpowered it all, but, of course, at my little experience at living beyond the walls of secured holding tanks, and no memory at the time of my prior livings, I couldn't be expected to recognize alcohol and burning rubber. Only the blood and smoke were familiar, in a far more sickening way than the other fumes. By the time I arrived at the scene, it was all I could do but vomit at the utter foul STENCH of it all.

But I couldn't even do that. My heart was pulled and wrenched at the sight. My eyes stung and watered from the smoke, my stomach churned at the stench, my ears rang because of the sirens, shouts of people and screams filled the air, I could feel the stinging of embers on my face, the heat of the fire… The heat of someone else's fire that 'fate' as I so called it had drawn me to… This was a new torture unlike the dancing taunting flames of the laboratory. If I dared open my mouth, it filled with the taste of alcohol and smoke that hung heavy in the air. Such was hardly breathable in the first place. Everything my eyes, ears, nose, and lips took in left me even more aghast than before.

At the heart of the scene were two cars. One, crashed into an apartment, which was caught in intense flames. The other was spun out into the street, on its side, and a bloody arm hang out of it. On the ground not far from this car was a broken beer bottle, its contents spilled all over the street. Loud music with a deafening bass was still playing from the laterally placed car, but the words were undecipherable.

The car that had crashed into the apartment complex look as if it had picked a fight with a can opener and lost, badly. The entire inside of the car was painted red, and blood dripped through an open window. The front passenger side door, which was the one with the window down, was caved into the car… very far, it seemed.

I saw the paramedics and policemen bring out the jaws of life, but I already knew that anybody who'd been in that car was dead. They did, too, the rescuers. They knew, but it was their job to recover the bodies so their families could identify the corpses. Common sense told me there would be nothing left to identify.

I lifted my gaze towards the open windows of the building. The fire raged out every hole and crevice mentionable. Cherry pickers were being used, but to no avail as the firefighters couldn't get close enough to the windows that families hung out of for the heat, screaming to their god for mercy. Their skin… it… seemed to melt and they decayed out of their windows… Excuse me, a second's pause.

These things still haunt me some lonely nights, and your face shows only a basic understanding of what it's like to actually be there. Beds were being set out to catch jumpers, but there were no jumpers left alive to be caught. Men in yellow coats and red helmets busted down doors, broke windows, and got inside the building any way they could. I never saw most of them come back out.

Water, or, at least, clean water, is scarce in the slums, and so the water that was poured on the scorching flames was contaminated, probably with oils on its surface, and only gave more power to the enemy. A woman ran out of the door on the roof of the apartment. She was hysterical and desperate, and tripped several times on her way to the edge. She dashed to the end of the building. She screamed words I couldn't understand, and then jumped, her panic getting the better of her; she had not known there were mattresses spread for her-- what good I--or they-- thought they would do, I don't know.

The remainder of helpful civilians and rescuing people were still trying to pry the doors open of the bloody automobile, and I remember a man running to them and trying to keep a distance as he cried out for them to run. He screamed of the dangers of the engine catching fire, and it is this that I saw when I looked to see where the desperate young woman would fall. I watched as the moment her freshly aflame and delicate frame touched the car, it combusted. All surrounding the car were killed. More fell to their deaths. A child screamed.

I turned my attention to the screaming young girl I'd come to see in the first place, surprised I could forget her; she'd been screaming her head off the whole time. She couldn't have been older than 7, and she sat on the curb not far from me, wrapped in a shock blanket, eyes wide and sobbing dramatically. She had freakish pale hair, almost blue-chrome in color and lusterous like you wouldn't believe, and it was amazing how natural it looked on her. No, her hair _was_ natural, I'm sure of it. Her skin was pale, her body was frail, and her knees were badly skinned, her body covered in small cuts and gashes.

I walked silently to her and sat beside her, almost slipping several times on the icy pavement. This, too, could have been a factor in the wreck.

I couldn't form words to calm the girl, so I put my hand on her shoulder. She couldn't form words to thank me for being concerned, so she cried on mine. At that moment… I saw what it meant to Ms. Crescent to save me from the fires. She'd gone through something similar, and was heartbroken to have to see someone live it again. I lie. Really what it was, was seeing it happen again dug up those painful memories, and she saw in me a second chance, a way to get closure for her own pain, as I saw in the little freakish child…

…Well, that's quite enough of my story for you, today. I think we've already faced enough angst without hearing my tragedy unfold. I'll pick up here tomorrow.


End file.
